By David Hood, Induron CEO

I remember well the afternoon of Oct. 4, 1957 – it was a big time in my life (and maybe yours too). I was somewhere between Gainsville, GA, and Birmingham, riding in the car with my dad. He had been in Gainsville for the weekend working as a volunteer “corner flagman” at an SCCA amateur sports car race. I was just a 14-year-old kid, amazed at the cars and men (and a few women) who drove them.

On that particular late afternoon, we were listening to the evening news when a strange “beep, beep, beep” sound came over the radio. It was a sound that changed almost everything in my future.

It was Sputnik!

The radio announcer explained that the Russians had launched a rocket that carried a device into orbit around the earth, where it would stay for a very long time with no further “push” and send radio signals until the battery went dead.

I was – and have been ever since – fascinated by all things mechanical. I was also (then and ever since) a red-blooded patriotic American, and I was not going to stand by and do nothing while those Russians were beating us technologically! That night I decided I was going to engineering school. I think many other Americans made the same decision, because, as you know, we developed a far superior and much more sophisticated space program than did anyone else on the world. Continue reading From Space Frontiers to Water Tower Paint →